I have an email problem
So if you follow me on Twitter at all, you have probably noticed that I have anxiety. My response to being overwhelmed by things is to just shut down and ignore them, which is… it’s a strategy that worked pretty okay back when I was in school. It doesn’t really work now.
I get a lot of emails a day, and frankly, I have historically been really bad at them. I would see an email, go “oh, shit, this requires a thoughtful response!”, flag it for later, then with every day that passed, think “oh, shit, now that it’s been so long, I need to give a response so thoughtful it makes the wait worth it!”, and then next thing I know I’m sitting on a giant pile of 100 unanswered messages from the past six months, a lot of them kinda important.
For the past month I have been trying an experiment wherein I use a piece of software—really, just a glorified todo list—to keep track of all my work and setting soft deadlines for everything. It has helped me a lot, and has managed to basically annihilate all of my email-related anxiety, which is… well, it’s really good mental health-wise. I would highly recommend it for anyone who has similar problems!
This is all to say: if I have let you down because of this ridiculous email anxiety, I’m deeply sorry. I got suddenly thrown into a situation where I had to deal with a lot more than I ever had in my life, but frankly, that is a shitty excuse. It is my responsibility to follow through on things I’ve committed to, and I know I have been really bad to a lot of people by failing to do that. I’m working very hard to fix that, so I hope you can accept my sincerest apologies.
I’ve gone through and caught up with as much as I can over the past month, but I know a lot has still slipped through the cracks. If you sent me something over a month ago expecting a response and I still haven’t gotten back to you, please, do send it again. I promise I will try to do better this time!
